A dream mysterious
by moonshadow3
Summary: Dawson has an unusual dream. A short D/J fanfic


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THE DREAM MYSTERIOUS

June, 2002

By Moonshadow

She came to him in a dream. Walking naked across the water sand of the river shore, serene and at one with the twilight land and sky around her. She glowed with the rich gleam of mahogany or the light reflected off a polished shard of obsidian, darkly bright. And yet her skin was light. He could not tell who she was from afar, watching her calm and graceful walk in front of him, but from afar; her womanly walk measured, her hands at her sides, looking neither looking right nor left. Tall and lithe. He knew it was a dream, even as he dreamed it. But still he yearned to see her face, to know her identity. She seemed familiar, somehow, but not known to him.

Suddenly she turned and looked at him, calmly waiting. He did not move but stood rooted to where he stood, the paralysis of dreams. She did not smile. She smoothly turned and in her unhurried female walk, came toward him. He could see her face a bit. He did not know who she was. But still his heart began to hammer in his chest, because he knew she was not a random woman, not just a naked fantasy of adolescence. The beauty of her nudity pulled at him, but the mystery of who she was captured his attention even more. He could see her, and yet he could not. He wished this was not a dream.

She calmly waited, standing easily on the flattened tidal sands of the creek. Coming no closer. He wanted to move toward her, but could not. She was a woman, he could see, and he was still mostly boy. But for a moment, he did not feel like a boy at all, and he raised his hand toward her. Then, she shimmered a moment, and her image began to blur and smear. She started to turn away, and he saw of glimpse of something else in her undefined face, a glimpse of someone else. But he did not know what. He could not tell who.

When he awoke from the dream, breathless and a little sweaty, he did not know what to think. He lay there, catching his breath and trying to remember everything about the dream. 

When he awoke from the dream, he thought of Joey.

The dream haunted him. Well, perhaps haunted was too strong of a word. But it stayed with him for a long time. In a way, it never left him, not completely. It was a mystery he could not unravel. A puzzle he could not solve. He didn't even know if he was supposed to. Maybe it was just a meaningless dream, merely the overheated thoughts of a healthy teenage boy, he tried to convince himself. 

Normally, this was just the kind of thing he would discuss with Joey. She not only knew him best, but was curious about his emerging masculinity. Interested in the things which made them different. She had a sixth sense sometimes too, as to what people meant, or why people did the things that they did. Not always. He often thought her blind to her father, but usually her sense was so acute that she could watch a stranger and often predict what the stranger would do or say next. It was a definite liability when they watched movies for the first time, as he liked to be surprised, and she would have to wait, almost rolling her eyes with impatience, as he figured out what she had already "seen" so many scenes before.

She liked dreams too, liked hearing about his dreams. More often than not she would deride them or laugh at them, in only the way a best friend can do, with great insult and teasing and affection. Sometimes she would become serious, feeling that the dream had another meaning, or was revealing something to him which he needed to see. At those times, she was all business, and he loved to see how her mind worked. He loved how seriously she would try to help him and how much she enjoyed the task. How her compassion and unique sense of knowing him would come through when she didn't realize it. It was at these times that he liked her best, and was reminded again of how lucky he was to have her for his friend.

But for some reason, or no reason at all, he could not seem to tell her about this dream.

****

"Yoo hoo. Earth to Dawson. Come in Dawson" Joey leaned over a little, smiling into Dawson's impassive face, his thoughts far away from the conversation at hand. He 'came to' with a little start, to see her smiling face looking at him with frank inquisitiveness.

"You sure checked out of here. What's going on?" she asked, friendly and curious. Maybe just a tiny bit concerned. Dawson always told her what was on his mind, and it was not like him to ruminate in silence.

"Oh, nothing" he said, then looked a little abashed, as if embarrassed to be caught daydreaming. He gave his head a little shake, his shoulders too, like shaking off the blanket of his thoughts. Joey kept looking at him, still curious and a little perplexed. "Okay, if you say so. But you've been lost in whatever it is you are thinking about for quite a while."

"I didn't know you'd notice."

"I notice. You should know by now that I notice most things about you" she said with a little smile. It was an odd thing for her to say, and it made him feel oddly. But not necessarily in a bad way.

When Joey saw that Dawson would not be any more forthcoming, she gave him one last bemused look, and turned her attention once again to her book, the conversation abandoned.

Dawson watched her for a while. How much she was still the Joey he knew, the childhood friend he knew like the back of his hand. He still felt that way about her. It didn't matter that they were older now, with testosterone and estrogen and other alchemies of nature working their magic upon them. The physical just didn't matter between them, because they knew what was underneath so well. They had weathered the rough seas of puberty and were handling young adulthood, the early teens, just fine. It was just a fact of life that they would grow up, a fact that they were handling with matter-of-fact aplomb, with practicality and rational thought and mature discussion. It was not a problem.

Briefly, almost as a passing thought, he noticed that her arms were gently rounded, so different than the little stick arms of her skinny girlhood. Other parts of her were gently rounded too, but he never thought of that. Never thought of her that way. It was just a fact, that she was different now. It had no meaning or effect upon him or their relationship. It was no different than if she were to cut her hair, or change her sweater. The outside may be a little different, but the inside remained the same. 

He had been thinking about the dream, when she had caught him in that eye-glazed-over daze. It had embarrassed him a little, as if she could read his thoughts and know what he had been thinking. Thinking about a beautiful naked woman walking along the river. A woman who was both a stranger and not a stranger. A woman he could not seem to tell her about.

She looked up just then, caught him staring at her. She arched her eyebrows in unspoken question. She only did this with him, and her sister. She had confidence around them, and he liked that. He wanted to open his mouth and tell her about the dream. She would like it, he knew. She would have a lot of fun with it. She might laugh and tell him it was smutty, or she might think it an omen. She might think it merely an extension of a movie they had watched together, one where there had been some unexpected nakedness which they had both pretended was commonplace for them, when it was not. Not yet.

She regarded him calmly, quizzically. It looked like he might speak to her. It looked like he wanted to tell her something. She waited, her expression encouraging. Whatever it was, he couldn't seem to spit it out. He looked a little uncomfortable, a little flushed. What could be on his mind? "What?!?" she finally blurted out in some exasperation.

"Nothing" he said again, looking a little confused, a little abashed. She fixed him with her eyes. Sometimes she could tell what he was thinking if she looked real hard, but he now seemed as unsure of his thoughts as she was.

Dawson gave a little short embarrassed laugh and looked down, avoiding her eyes. "Just something stupid" he mumbled. It wasn't stupid, he knew, but he felt like it was. It was stupid he couldn't just tell her. He raised his head to tell her, just to get it over with, but the words just didn't come. Instead, he suddenly wondered, for the first time ever, what her lips would feel like under his.

Joey was looking intently at him. She gave him all of her attention, as if his every thought mattered to her. The thought went through his mind that he wanted to kiss her. Just for the barest millisecond of time, like the shutter opening and closing on a camera, gone almost before it started. He instantly looked away from her, in shock. She was his best friend! This was not a thought he could ever imagine having. She was like a sister to him. It didn't matter that she had rounded arms, or anything else round. Or that her lips were pretty, and her eyes intent, or that she made him feel good. Or that she was smart and funny and honest and fiercely protective of him. She was just his friend, and he wanted to keep it that way. This did not have anything to do with the dream, he was sure. It was just coincidence.

But still, he could not bring himself to tell her of the dream. 

For a long time afterward, whenever he thought of the dream, he thought of Joey. Without any reason for it, the two became inextricably linked in his mind. And he did not know why. It was a mystery. It was a puzzle. And it confused him. For a long time, it confused him. Until one day, it no longer confused him. But that was a long way off. A long time in the future. One day, he would tell her about the dream. But not then. Because on that particular day, at that particular moment, for the tiniest briefest of moments, he had wanted to kiss her. 

And that was not a dream. 


End file.
